For every new business, marketing is the mandatory aspect to do to sustain the business with good revenue in the beginning.
If you have a small business then you must have the proper knowledge of the marketing strategies for small businesses which can be done at a very minimal cost.
Now, I have observed two types of people doing such activities while doing the business.
People who do not spend money behind the marketing to grow their business, and the second one, people who are spending too much money on marketing without any strategy and plan.
If you are any of both, your effort for marketing will not produce the expected results, your efforts and money are a total waste.
It doesn’t matter from which country or state you belong to, the marketing fundamentals are the same and applied everywhere on the planet.
Before learning about the small business marketing strategies, you must know what marketing is, because there is a very huge misconception about marketing in people’s minds.
What is Marketing?
Many people do not understand the difference between marketing and promotion. They consider the promotion as marketing.
They believe that marketing means sending bulk messages and emails to the prospects and approaching them to buy their products or services.
I have observed a very major mistake that many people are making. they don’t have their product catalog, don’t have the funnel, don’t have the website, and not enough content about their business.
And as a result, when a customer comes to them, the customer can not have his query answered properly by the seller, and all the efforts go in the flush done by the seller.
Now, let’s understand what marketing is. The goal of doing marketing is to increase sales. It’s right, but do you know that marketing doesn’t drive the sale directly?
Yes, you are reading a rare but right thing!
Marketing is to generate trust, marketing builds the trust in your audience’s mind, and that trust carries the sales.
Many people believe that sales are the direct output of marketing, but it’s totally wrong. Marketing is a three-step process, but generally, people consider it a two-step process.
So, how should you do marketing, should you spend money on marketing, if so, then how much money should you spend?
Should you do online marketing or offline marketing, which one should be executed first? These all are very important questions and are going to be answered deeply in this article.
Best Marketing Strategies For Small Business With Low Cost
Hence, there are some strategies for marketing to grow your business which you should implement at the beginning of the business.
Sometimes some people make a very big mistake that they start directly doing digital marketing by Facebook ads and Google ads with the launch of their business.
Yes, digital marketing is such a mandatory technique, but there is a certain time when you should execute them.
But before that, you should run some local techniques for marketing that build a strong trust in your audience’s mind.
So let’s explore those awesome marketing methodologies for a small business that can be done with a very minimum investment amount and boost your business the earliest.
1. Nearby Marketing
I want to give you a very good example and reference to explain the pros and cons of nearby marketing. Cons stand for the results if you do not perform the nearby marketing.
Covishield is the vaccine to get protected from the coronavirus, and it has been invented by Indian scientists, and India is also distributing it to other countries, right?
What if the Indian government and the Indian population do not use it, or do not trust it, and don’t recommend and suggest? Will other countries accept it?
The answer is No! Right?
Similarly, first of all, you should build trust in your local networks like your family members, friend circles, and relatives.
Many people underestimate the nearby market, and they do not believe in its power. But nearby marketing is the very first step to start marketing for your small business.
Do you know that most startups fail due to incorrect ways of marketing? As long as someone starts a new business, they directly start to post their products and services on social media.
This is not the right way, the right way is to communicate personally with the people who know you and whom you know.
Because they already have trust in you, and you are supposed to take the advantage of that trust by explaining to them about your brand and business and approaching them to share your details in their networks.
And, I am stating here the three most important advantages of doing nearby marketing.
- You will get your first customer from them
- You will get genuine feedback and suggestion
- You will get the marketing channel growth
As your friends and relatives know about your business, and they have used your products personally, they will promote your business to others, which will drive more genuine customers for your business.
You might not know that if you run the nearby marketing strategy, the first 15-20 customers come from there without spending a single rupee.
As long as your customer base increases and your business starts to become stable, it is time to execute the next strategy of marketing for new business.
2. Network Groups Marketing
Network group marketing is one of the best small parts of digital marketing which you execute without adding a single rupee in your marketing campaign.
Create certain groups on Whatsapp, and Telegram by adding your existing customers, and send them daily updates for your products, services, offers, cashback offers, and discount offers, etc…
Because they are the people who trust you, and if they would not need to buy it, they will share your details with their other network.
And ultimately, it will drive many sales for your business. Now if you have only 5 groups containing 50 people in each. So your content can be shared 250 times, and this chain never stops.
Now, initially, it will happen that only a few people will share your products with others, but as long as your trust will become strong with them, you can’t imagine how many customers you can drive per day.
3. Local Listing
The Founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos didn’t start to sell the products directly in India and other countries.
First, he started books to sell only in his territory, then he covered his state, then his country, and then he started to acquire businesses in other countries of the world.
So, here I want to explain that local listing is too mandatory to grow your business and apply a successful marketing strategy for your business.
When we talk about marketing, word of mouth of people is social media marketing only, they do not communicate about the local listing.
A local listing marketing strategy means you are supposed to list out your business and products on the online directories.
For instance, Just dial, Google My Business, IndiaMart, TradeIndia, Trading, and there are many online business directories that appear in the top results of Google when a customer searches for a specific query.
By doing this, you will get the benefit of driving customers to your local area who do not know about your business.
For example, you are having a business of racks, and you have listed your business on IndiaMart.
Now, any person from your local area or your nearby area will search for the best racks, IndiaMart will be ranking on Google’s top 10 positions, and your brand will be there.
Another best marketing strategy in local listings is newspaper marketing. If you are thinking that newspaper marketing strategy is outdated in the era of digitalization, then you are missing a very legit step to follow.
Still, there is a huge class of people who trust the newspaper and admire the products advertised in the newspaper.
The real estate business still relies on newspaper marketing to drive potential customers.
In spite of using newspaper marketing, you should have the online entity of your business because people visit your website by scanning your website URL or QR code in the newspaper.
4. Content Marketing
Marketing can not exist without content, whether you do newspaper marketing, local listing marketing, network groups marketing, or nearby marketing, in all of those methods, you need content.
But the content and content marketing are different from each other. You should start content marketing when your business grows to a certain level.
If there are many people who are willing to join you, when you are searching for the marketing techniques to reach the maximum numbers of people at a very low cost, then you should go for content marketing.
Content marketing is the best way to acquire more people with a minimal amount of investment.
You can consider me as the best example, I am sharing my skills through this blog. This is content marketing, where I am sharing the content of my skill (business) to thousands of people via a specific medium which is the blog.
Now, suppose that if I would have my own course, and I would be marketing here, how many numbers of customers would I get?
It’s limitless, right? Because many people over the day visit my blog and if I get only a 0.1% conversion rate, I can make a lot of money by this content marketing strategy.
Another way to do content marketing is to make the reels, and reels are one of the most trending topics nowadays.
Then video marketing, text content marketing, and there are many other content marketing sources by which you can engage your potential customers and prospects with you and your business.
5. Paid Marketing
After content marketing, the last marketing strategy for small businesses is paid marketing in which you invest the money to grow your business via marketing.
You can invest your money in Facebook ads, Google ads, Bing Ads, and other ad networks, who collect your ad materials and forward them to their publishers to serve their audience.
Now, some people follow the reverse process, as long as they start a business, they start to invest the money in paid ads without having a strong base potential.
You should never do this, you should do this in the end when your business is in a grown state, when you are earning money from your business, and when you are growing continuously.
Hence, the best method for paid marketing is influencer marketing. It means to market your business from a guy who has already a huge fan directory on social media.
Conclusion on Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses
You should understand one thing clearly that marketing is for gaining trust, not for selling your product directly to anyone.
Never try to promote or sell any product to anyone without making him engaged with you or with your business, products, and services.
When you opt for paid marketing, you should give second priority to Facebook ads and Google ads, first you have to market your business by the influencer.
Because an influencer has already built trust in his audience’s mind, and if he will recommend your products, many of them will choose to come with you without a doubt.
